Preliminary tier list for non-dungeon-crawl-y games where noncombat utility matters, but fighting is important too

[Colette Brunel]

Here is my preliminary tier list for non-dungeon-crawl-y games where noncombat utility matters, but fighting is important too. The strongest and most flexible classes are at the top, and the weaker ones are at the bottom. What do people think of this ranking?

Quick Preparation Tier:
• 4th-level wizard with Quick Preparation. What is there to say? Bringing around a loadout of combat spells and then swapping them around for noncombat utility as the need arises is immensely narratively potent.

Abundant Resources Tier:
• Pure caster cleric. Between spell slots, Spell Points, and a positive energy pool with which to keep the party topped off in hit points between battles, the pure caster cleric brings a wide and deep array of resources to the table.

Bulk of the Spellcasters Tier:
• Bard, weapon cleric, druid, sorcerer, non-Quick-Preparation wizard. A good mix of combat spells and noncombat utility. Weapon clerics are a little worse off than pure caster clerics, I think, because swinging around a weapon significantly cuts into magical resources in exchange for a vague semblance of greater offense.

Skill Monkey Tier:
• Rogue. Skill increases and skill feats might not be spectacular, but at least the rogue receives an abundance of them. Multiclassing into fighter for Double Slice really helps here.

Solid Martial Tier:
• Barbarian and fighter. They can go up to bad guys and kill them with perfectly serviceable results. Alas, they will be utterly unable to do much outside of combat, between Strength and armor penalties.
• Monk. Monks suffer from mediocre AC that opens them up to critical hits, and their damage dice are not spectacular. On the other hand, they really are quite mobile, agile helps actually land a third attack, and since they need not deal with armor penalties, they can actually do things outside of combat.

Flawed Martial Tier:
• Paladin. A paladin's Retributive Strike is a little worse than Attack of Opportunity for defense and control, and paladin class features are on the shabbier side. Champion powers are not especially spectacular, even before we get into the Lay on Hands fiasco. Medium or heavy armor does not help skill prospects, either.

Hunt Target Tier:
• Ranger. Hunt Target is just awful for the first two or three rounds of combat, the rounds that actually matter. The ranger class features are generally poor, too. Just about the ranger's only saving grace is a larger packet of trained skills.

Worthless Tier:
• Alchemist. Alchemical items just are not very good when someone runs the numbers on them, and they gluttonously devour Resonance.

[Colette Brunel]

I should also add that clerics are skill monkeys, since they have six trained skills to start with, counting their domain trained skills.

[Arachnofiend]

I feel like the cleric might actually be superior to a Quick Prep Wizard. The party without a Quick Prep Wizard can still solve all the same challenges, just slower or less efficiently; the party without a cleric is dead. Cleric healing is so far and above every other class's capability to keep the party alive, and you sure as hell aren't lasting more than two encounters with a Medicine Rogue as your healer, that's for sure.

[Colette Brunel]

You raise a fair point about the cleric.

Here is a revised tier list, then:

Poorly-Worded Tier:
• Universalist wizard, ideally with Quick Preparation. "You can use Drain Arcane Focus once each day per each spell level you can cast, instead of only once per day" means that if you can cast 2nd-level spells, you can use Drain Arcane Focus twice per day, regaining a 2nd-level spell each time. At 20th level, with 10th-level spells, you can use Drain Arcane Focus ten times per day, regaining a 10th-level spell each time.

Topped-Off Hit Points Tier:
• Cleric with a positive energy pool, ideally as a pure caster cleric and not a weapon cleric, no matter how much the game tries to sell you on weapon clerics. The positive energy pool helps keep a party topped off in hit points even after grueling battles. No party can recover from combat quite as well as a party with a positive energy cleric. Every party that wants to go for more than a couple of fights each day needs a positive energy pool cleric present. Clerics are also skill monkeys with 6 base trained skills including the domain skill, a healthy degree of spellcasting, and a few gems of Spell Point domain powers (e.g. fire ray) among a sea of trap options. Also, Nethys provides an abundant list of spells, and the protection domain's divine ward is good for preventing focused fire on the party and making the most of area heal spells.

Quick Preparation Tier:
• Non-universalist wizard with Quick Preparation. While it is not as broken as the universalist wizard benefit, bringing around a loadout of combat spells and then swapping them around for noncombat utility as the need arises is immensely narratively potent.

Bulk of the Spellcasters Tier:
• Bard, druid, sorcerer, non-universalist wizard without Quick Preparation. A good mix of combat spells and noncombat utility.

Skill Monkey Tier:
• Rogue. Skill increases and skill feats might not be spectacular, but at least the rogue receives an abundance of them. Multiclassing into fighter for Double Slice really helps here.

Solid Martial Tier:
• Barbarian and fighter. They can go up to bad guys and kill them with perfectly serviceable results. Alas, they will be utterly unable to do much outside of combat, between Strength and armor penalties.
• Monk. Monks suffer from mediocre AC that opens them up to critical hits, and their damage dice are not spectacular. On the other hand, they really are quite mobile, agile helps actually land a third attack, and since they need not deal with armor penalties, they can actually do things outside of combat.

Flawed Martial Tier:
• Paladin. A paladin's Retributive Strike is a little worse than Attack of Opportunity for defense and control, and paladin class features are on the shabbier side. Champion powers are not especially spectacular, even before we get into the Lay on Hands fiasco. Medium or heavy armor does not help skill prospects, either.

Hunt Target Tier:
• Ranger. Hunt Target is just awful for the first two or three rounds of combat, the rounds that actually matter. The ranger class features are generally poor, too. Just about the ranger's only saving grace is a larger packet of trained skills.

Worthless Tier:
• Alchemist. Alchemical items just are not very good when someone runs the numbers on them, and they gluttonously devour Resonance.

How does the tier list look now?

[Colette Brunel]

How do people here feel about weapon clerics in this tier list? They are not quite as good at flinging around abundant resources and healing as pure caster clerics, but they can still keep a party somewhat topped-off.

[Secret Wizard]

Quote:

• Barbarian and fighter. They can go up to bad guys and kill them with perfectly serviceable results. Alas, they will be utterly unable to do much outside of combat, between Strength and armor penalties.

[For Fighter/Paladins] What armor penalties? Everyone and their mother wants to use Splint Mail, which has a -2 ACP at Expert and only gets lower than that as you get better qualities. Signature Intimidation and Crafting don't seem half bad either, and the Fighter has versatility in-built.

Really a matter of what level you are looking at this though.

[Pandora's]

Clerics don't get their deity's skill trained. They get it as a signature, and are trained in their deity's favored weapon. I had to read that twice to get it right.

I honestly feel like weapon clerics with fighter multiclass don't lose much. Most cleric feats only seem alright, so the fighter multiclass doesn't feel too painful. Even ignoring magic weapon/heroism/haste (if you're smart and took Irori), swinging around a greatsword is much better damage then you'll get out of cantrips. With those spells, you can probably match if not exceed pure martials in damage output and still have all your other spell slots on top. What's the cost for all that? Emblazon Symbol, which you probably wanted anyway? Pumping strength as your secondary stat after wisdom? The hit to charisma, and therefore free Heals, at early levels is probably the worst part, but even that's pretty minor.

[Rameth]

How is Hunt a bad? One action to designate the target then you can fire two shots of your bow with only a - 4 on the second shot, nice no matter what lvl you are. Or you can stride and attack at full attack for one. Then next round, unless your target moves, you get a lot of lowered multi attack penalties. Especially with agile weapons.

[Colette Brunel]

Pandora's wrote:

Pumping strength as your secondary stat after wisdom? The hit to charisma, and therefore free Heals, at early levels is probably the worst part, but even that's pretty minor.

I would say that having less uses of heal each day is really quite a bother, seeing how it is a max-level spell that can help out in combat and outside of combat. The scaling between dealing damage and healing is more more favorable to healing in 2e than it was in 1e.

Also, using the weapon calls for actually investing in a magic weapon.

[Colette Brunel]

Secret Wizard wrote:

What armor penalties? Everyone and their mother wants to use Splint Mail, which has a -2 ACP at Expert and only gets lower than that as you get better qualities. Signature Intimidation and Crafting don't seem half bad either, and the Fighter has versatility in-built.

Fighters will have middling Intelligence and Charisma modifiers in all likelihood, and they want a breastplate over heavy armor so that they need not suffer the indignity of -5 speed. Heavy armor only has to be reluctantly accepted for the heavy-armor-specific class features.

[Secret Wizard]

Colette Brunel wrote:

Secret Wizard wrote:

What armor penalties? Everyone and their mother wants to use Splint Mail, which has a -2 ACP at Expert and only gets lower than that as you get better qualities. Signature Intimidation and Crafting don't seem half bad either, and the Fighter has versatility in-built.

Fighters will have middling Intelligence and Charisma modifiers in all likelihood, and they want a breastplate over heavy armor so that they need not suffer the indignity of -5 speed. Heavy armor only has to be reluctantly accepted for the heavy-armor-specific class features.

Middling Ability Scores don't matter. Proficiency matters more. Skill Feats matter more.

-5 speed doesn't matter to Fighters, Sudden Charge is a thing. Paladins are positional, so they need to find a way to make it work. Eventually, both are likely getting Mithral armor though.

[Colette Brunel]

Secret Wizard wrote:

middling ability scores

This is a game with bounded accuracy respective to characters of a specific level. That means that ability modifier still very much matters.

Secret Wizard wrote:

skill feats

They are generally quite weak.

Secret Wizard wrote:

sudden charge

Sudden Charge with 5 more speed is 10 more feet of movement, possibly enough to get into a decent flanking position.

Secret Wizard wrote:

paladins are positional

Then they are rather curtailed by heavy armor.

Secret Wizard wrote:

mithral

Mithral is exorbitantly expensive, and it does not improve speed.

[Colette Brunel]

On the topic of clerics being strong, while most domains are quite poor, a contact of mine wrote up a guide to selecting optimal cleric domains.

An optimized cleric is really quite the MVP to the party, able to contribute with spell slots, Spell Points, and positive energy pool uses. No party will be able to sustain themselves throughout an adventuring day as long as a party with a positive energy cleric.

[Colette Brunel]

I am considering bumping the barbarian down from "solid martial" to "flawed martial" in this tier list. While the fighter's class features at 11th and 17th are stinkers, so are the barbarian's features at 3rd and 5th are marginal, and those come much earlier. Barbarians are also somewhat MAD between Dexterity and Constitution; they want to start with Strength 18 and Dexterity 16, but that leaves them with only Constitution 12, which means they have merely Constitution 14 by 5th level, Constitution 16 by 10th level, and Constitution 18 by 15th level.

Rage takes an action at the start of combat unless the barbarian has prep time, and even with such prep time, I do not think it makes as much of an impact on the battlefield as the lockdown from Attack of Opportunity. Furthermore, the totem benefits are just plain sad to look at, and the fighter starting at expert for weapons is actually a decent benefit.

What do people think of this assessment?

[Colette Brunel]

After doing some thinking on barbarians and paladins, I would like to revise my tier list:

Poorly-Worded Tier:
• Universalist wizard, ideally with Quick Preparation. "You can use Drain Arcane Focus once each day per each spell level you can cast, instead of only once per day" means that if you can cast 2nd-level spells, you can use Drain Arcane Focus twice per day, regaining a 2nd-level spell each time. At 20th level, with 10th-level spells, you can use Drain Arcane Focus ten times per day, regaining a 10th-level spell each time.

Topped-Off Hit Points Tier:
• Cleric with a positive energy pool, ideally as a pure caster cleric and not a weapon cleric, no matter how much the game tries to sell you on weapon clerics. The positive energy pool helps keep a party topped off in hit points even after grueling battles. No party can recover from combat quite as well as a party with a positive energy cleric. Every party that wants to go for more than a couple of fights each day needs a positive energy pool cleric present. Clerics are also skill monkeys with 5 base trained skills including the domain skill, a healthy degree of spellcasting, and a few gems of Spell Point domain powers (see someone else's cleric domain rating document here ) among a sea of trap options. Also, Nethys provides an abundant list of spells, and the protection domain's Divine Ward is good for preventing focused fire on the party and making the most of area heal spells.

Quick Preparation Tier:
• Non-universalist wizard with Quick Preparation. While it is not as broken as the universalist wizard benefit, bringing around a loadout of combat spells and then swapping them around for noncombat utility as the need arises is immensely narratively potent.

Bulk of the Spellcasters Tier:
• Bard, druid, sorcerer, non-universalist wizard without Quick Preparation. A good mix of combat spells and noncombat utility.

Topped-Off Hit Points from a Martial Tier:
• Paladin, though it is a flawed martial from 1st to 3rd, and it really only takes off by 4th level. Lay on Hands is an absolute mess, but Deity's Domain at 1st level can fix that, offering some fairly decent domain powers such as charming touch, weapon surge (though this drops off later), and word of truth. Channel Life at 4th level is the real winner, since it is an incredibly potent means of keeping the party in tip-top shape throughout an adventuring day. Attack of Opportunity at 6th level strongly improves a paladin's lockdown potential. Charisma certainly helps out of combat, too.

Skill Monkey Tier:
• Rogue. Skill increases and skill feats might not be spectacular, but at least the rogue receives an abundance of them. Multiclassing into fighter for Double Slice really helps here.

Solid Martial Tier:
• Fighter. They can go up to bad guys and kill them with decent accuracy and perfectly serviceable results. Alas, they will be utterly unable to do much outside of combat, between Strength and armor penalties.
• Monk. Monks suffer from mediocre AC that opens them up to critical hits, and their damage dice are not spectacular. On the other hand, they really are quite mobile, agile helps actually land a third attack, and since they need not deal with armor penalties, they can actually do things outside of combat.

Flawed Martial Tier:
• Barbarian. They have shabby class features as early as 3rd and 5th level. Barbarians are also somewhat MAD between Dexterity and Constitution; they want to start with Strength 18 and Dexterity 16, but that leaves them with only Constitution 12, which means they have merely Constitution 14 by 5th level, Constitution 16 by 10th level, and Constitution 18 by 15th level. Rage takes an action at the start of combat unless the barbarian has prep time, and it is not even that high-impact. Furthermore, the totem benefits are just plain sad to look at.

Hunt Target Tier:
• Ranger. Hunt Target is just awful for the first two or three rounds of combat, the rounds that actually matter. The ranger class features are generally poor, too. Just about the ranger's only saving grace is a larger packet of trained skills.

Worthless Tier:
• Alchemist. Alchemical items just are not very good when someone runs the numbers on them, and they gluttonously devour Resonance.

How does this new tier list look? I am a little hesitant to place a paladin over a rogue, but then, Channel Life really is amazing for long-term party endurance. Compared to the cleric though, it is likely going to be unusable mid-battle due to the Somatic Casting.

[Laik]

This revised list looks very close to what i experienced in playtesting, right.

I would rate arcane/nature/sorcerers 1 tier lower than other spellcaster classes, since they are suffering from limited options gaining little in return. Divine sorcerers are about as weak as Hunt target tier: divine spell list offers less means of good offense, while sorcerers lack any defenses and special abilities that compensate clerics for this spell lsit difficulties.

As for rangers, I had better experience with double-sliceranger build (completely forgoing the hunt target class feature). They become nearly as good as solid martial tier.

Right now, I expect universalist wziards, alchemists and divine sorcerers to see some good revision after enough playtesting information goes to devs.

[magnuskn]

Colette Brunel wrote:

On the topic of clerics being strong, while most domains are quite poor, a contact of mine wrote up a guide to selecting optimal cleric domains.

An optimized cleric is really quite the MVP to the party, able to contribute with spell slots, Spell Points, and positive energy pool uses. No party will be able to sustain themselves throughout an adventuring day as long as a party with a positive energy cleric.

That was pretty clear already by just logically adding "fewer spells per day for everyone" + "resonance" + "Clerics are the optimal healers". Thanks for confirming it one more time! :)